The US has reimposed economic sanctions against a Venezuelan state-owned mining company and says it could go on to reimpose further sanctions on the country’s oil and gas sector after Venezuela’s Supreme Court barred main opposition candidate Maria Corina Machado from running for president last week.
The US Treasury on Monday revoked General License 43, which had authorized dealings with mining conglomerate CVG-Minerven. The Treasury said US companies have until February 13 to wind down transactions that were previously authorized by that license.
While US economic sanctions against the mining company are unlikely to cause significant damage to the Venezuelan economy, the US State Department has crucially signaled it intends to renew oil and gas sanctions from April 18, if there’s no progress between Venezuela’s authoritarian president Nicolas Maduro and the opposition “particularly on allowing all presidential candidates to compete in this year’s elections,” it said in a statement.
She wants to privatize huge swathes of the Venezuelan government and wants a Milei style capitalist “shock therapy”. She’s on record not only stating that helping poor people is bad, but defends the statement. She’d make a bad situation for the Venezuelan people far, far worse. Of fucking course she should be barred from running. The US should stop intervening in South America.
Barring people from running because you dislike their platform is as fascist as it gets.
Kinda weird since the US bars anyone from running under many different reasons from age to location of birth. Hell, in some states you can’t run for office if you have a felony or are atheist. In Florida if you don’t like someone running against you there just needs to be some bullshit charges and a paid off judge to gets some felony charges. Then in Arizona they are trying to remove the way the state delegates electorates based on popular vote so that the votes don’t matter.
People can be barred from running under many legal reasons in mostly every government. Baring people from running if they are advocating for things that are believed to be bad for the nation is at least well intentioned. What intention does baring someone from running for president simply because they were born somewhere else?
All of this ignoring how the US general elections are decided by two parties and the primaries they run where you can be snubbed for your platform. “Ah well it’s not the government doing it, it’s just the parties that control the government that are doing it”
Look at that deafening silence. You know you’re speaking truth to power when people are upset at you but don’t try to contest what you’re saying.
First of all, all censorship and undemocratic laws are justified by “protecting the people” from dangerous ideas, case and point, the Kids Online Safety Act, the problem being, who defines what is bad or good? and the fact of the matter is that people on power will always conveniently decide that the opposition is “dangerous” and “extremist”.
Secondly, the US system, as broken as it is today, actually started in a time where there were no political parties and as such, it was a popularity contest between whoever wanted to run, and still is to a point, had the system not had been enveloped by them.
Finally, the point of the location of birth is that most people tend to be faithful to their nation, especially the one they were born (of course it is not linear, but it is a reasonable rule)
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What definition of fascism is it that prevents fascists from running for president?
There is no need to be tolerant of the intolerant. They don’t abide by the social contract and don’t reap the benefits of it.
Should Trump be barred from running?
Yes, because he violated his oath of office
And that includes upholding the constitution. Not helping poor people kind of violates that in spirit right?
Many believe that your so called help for the poor makes things worse for the poor in the long run. You don’t have to agree with their position, but you need to accept that they are reasonable people looking at facts and coming up with a different interpretation.
helping the poor actually harms the poor
That’s supposed to be a reasonable argument worth entertaining? By that logic, trump violated the Constitution to protect! Do we have to accept that as a reasonable position too, even if we don’t agree?
I have no idea what you mean by this, sorry
Ok. So here’s the situation then. In the US, a person that shouldn’t be eligible for candidacy is not only running, but leading the Republican primary. In Venezuela, a person that would similarly harm their country is banned from running.
She is barred from office because the Venezuelan supreme court is the legal arm of Nicolas Maduro’s Regime. On the other side IQ45 attempted a coup and that makes him ineligible to hold office.
Fix your own stupid supreme courts first before meddling in Latin America.
We can’t fix for what we can’t vote in either country. Neither Venezuela or the US of A has a method, limits or guardrails to what these people could do. Also, not a fan of this concept where if the US fix the Supreme Court can meddle anywhere in the world, that view is colonialist AF.
I’m not saying I support Moduro, only that I think this is a decision that will protect the most vulnerable people from aggressive and brutal privatization. There are some pretty good parties in the opposition, but Come Venezuela should not be allowed. It would be disastrous for an already struggling country.
You sound exactly like a Trump supporter talking about “the establishment”
Well not only does he have shitty policies, he did also attempt a coup. Which is why he should be barred from running.
Stop attempting the false equivalence, it’s not working.
Her party tried to rob a military arsenal, she was charged with a conspiracy and corruption, and so she can’t run. It went through their courts. It all seems legal, considering people in the US can’t run for similar reasons. It might be corrupt, idk, but the US doesn’t have a leg to stand on with corrupt courts. Why sanction other countries, which always affects the regular citizens, for this stuff we can’t even figure out ourselves?
Yes, because he’s a traitor, fraud, and criminal. Your question is not quite the gotcha you think it is.
It wasn’t intended as a gotcha. I wanted a baseline to know whether the conversation was worth continuing.
You literally just proved it is exactly the gotcha you think it is lol
Yes, because he has been impeached and indicted multiple times for charges related to violations of the oath of office of the presidency.
What are Machado’s crimes that she should be barred?
From what I can tell, conspiracy (against the government), inciting violent protests, and corruption. It’s weird they don’t say it in the article. But she says the protests were supposed to be peaceful and some of the conspiracy evidence was faked, which it might be, idk, I wasn’t in the court room.
But considering the US is still doing shit like this, I could see why they have to be paranoid.
I don’t think a democratic process should be limited to only banning people that broke the law. Someone that intentionally wants to harm people through excessive austerity like Machado and Milei shouldn’t be able to run.
Remember, Hitler was elected. If a democratic process can’t stop a person like that from running, then the democratic process is failed.
This all sounds nice until you realize that a system like this would be easily abused. “I’m sorry, but the one candidate that actually stands a chance against me is banned because the courts full of judges I appointed has determined that their policies are harmful.”
Who gets to be the arbiter of what policies are acceptable and what are not? Let the voters decide for themselves.
The system can be made robust though. Implementation is also important, and I’m just one person so I’m not going create that framework for an Internet discussion. The question that the framework should rely on power: is the candidate advocating for a distribution of power, or a centralization of power? Privatization seeks to centralize power, for example.
State capitalism also centralizes power. It’s just centralized with the government instead of a monied class. I don’t think that’s necessarily a problem if there is a robust electoral system and a low level of corruption but I feel based upon everything I’ve read about Venezuela that they’re lacking in both.
Okay, so you don’t believe in democracy.
I can make reductionist arguments too:
Okay, so you believe it was a good thing that Hitler was elected.
Oh yeah more sanctions for trouble areas. Surely this will help our immigration problem
What immigration problem?
Oh, you’re a victim of a government we deem undemocratic? We’ll further suffocate you economically then!
Sanctions should be recognized as a crime against humanity.
I don’t think they should have barred Machado from running, but I also don’t think the US should sanction them over it. American meddling never improves this sort of situation, especially when in the form of hurting a country’s economy.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez described the move as “blackmail” on Tuesday, warning that Caracas would stop cooperating in repatriation flights for Venezuelan migrants from the US if Washington’s “economic aggression” intensifies.
In October, the Biden administration lifted general economic sanctions targeting Venezuela’s mining and oil industries, in support of an agreement struck in Barbados between Maduro and the opposition to hold free and fair elections in 2024.
Earlier on Monday, White House’s spokesperson John Kirby had said Maduro had until April to return to the negotiating table and commit to what was agreed last year, including holding free elections where all candidates are allowed to run, or sanctions could be reimposed.
It also has the potential to impact the US domestic gas market because several US companies, including Chevron, operate in Venezuela and Venezuelan crude is regularly exported to refineries in the US Gulf Coast, data from the US Energy Information Administration show.
In an interview with CNN’s Isa Soares on Tuesday, Machado warned millions more Venezuelans could flee the country if Maduro doesn’t comply with commitments to hold free elections.
Machado also commented on Rodríguez’s warning that Venezuela could stop cooperating on repatriation flights, saying, “You can imagine that it breaks my heart to see our people being used in such a hard and unlawful way.
The original article contains 555 words, the summary contains 218 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
How long can Maduro continue to starve his people and threaten his neighbors before the world steps in and does something?
Ah, the good ol “spreading of democracy” in an oil rich country. A true classic.
This is in very poor taste as a comment on an article about the US increasing sanctions that really will make Venezuelans go hungry.
How many times must the US interfere with countries and elections in the global south before people realize that these types of articles suggesting war, coups, and sanctions are just puppeting US State propaganda?
What kind of election is it when anyone with a chance of beating Maduro is conveniently banned from running? The US has an abysmal record in south and Central America but that doesn’t change the fact that Maduro is an autocrat.
Perhaps he is an autocrat, but let the Venezuelans sort it out and stop intervening by coups or starving the whole country.
They are being sanction because they haven’t sorted it out.
I would like them to be able to sort it out themselves by allowing them to vote for whomever they want which is the issue with barring a candidate that hasn’t done anything wrong other than having the wrong policy platform as determined by those that already hold power.
On the subject of US sanctions, they don’t apply to food, agricultural commodities, and medicine. Nations have a right to decide whom they allow trade with; it’s certainly preferable to coups which never seem to pan out well for anyone.
I spend a lot of time in Colombia and see the years-long stream of refugees from Venezuela who are starving and are suffering. Don’t ask me to look into their eyes and tell them it’s just propaganda.
In this case, the South American leader is the one doing the warmongering.
You realize they’ve been sanctioned to shit for decades by the US, right? That makes them extremely vulnerable to price changes to oil, their basically only economic export. They probably should be diversifying more, though.
Starvation and suffering is terrible. This is the result of sanctioning from the US and its western allies. None of this is happening in a vacuum.
“Democracy is Bad, Actually” - Terminally Online ‘Leftists’
Do you believe someone who foments an insurrection like Trump should be allowed to participate in a good faith election? I don’t know the specifics of what’s happening in Venezuela but simply barring someone from an election isn’t the full context you need to properly evaluate the decision.
I don’t know the specifics of what’s happening in Venezuela
Maduro is deeply unpopular and the authoritarian regime in Venezuela has been trying to avoid having actual elections.
Sounds like it’s a similar charge for her. She was implicated in some kind of conspiracy against the government, including getting sanctions on them and possible assassinations, as well as corruption and fermenting violent protests. It could all be faked or trumped up, but it is interesting that everybody here is assuming it is while the US literally is going through the same thing right now, except we might end up with a fascist President if we don’t get him off the fucking ballot.
Allowing every single person to run in an election =/ democracy. Years later, when you eventually read an article buried in the back pages of the NYT, that this candidacy was funded and propped by the US government JUST like so many before it, maybe it’ll sink in. Probably not, but maybe this one instance among so many will do the trick.
Proof?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America
“The Congressional Research Service wrote in 2021 that “U.S. efforts to date have failed to dislodge Maduro and enable the convening of free and fair elections” and said that the Biden administration began to review the societal impact of sanctions against Venezuela.”
The extent to which the Biden administration is meddling likely won’t be known until the next president is in office. It always comes out later.
https://jacobin.com/2020/11/operation-condor-cia-latin-america-repression-torture
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/7/16/ameri-coup-a-brief-history-of-us-misdeeds
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/29/latin-america-us-allied-forces-reaction
Throwing this on your pile, too. DEA spying operation on Venezuela with people who might have also stolen hundreds of dollars from Venezuela.
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-easing-venezuela-oil-sanctions-response-election-deal-official-2023-10-18/ Also should be noted that these sanctions, left by Biden for three years, are the only mechanism for money to come into Venezuela. Oil is their only source of money. Maduro’s government is deeply despised by the US and western governments due to the nationalization of their oil and mining industries. Sanction oil sales, starve the people. Maduro’s government has ruled under genocidal sanctions and gets the blame for it. The US should let Venezuela breathe and eat.
I believe they’re referencing how Trump’s administration tried to do a coup in Venezuela, Operation Gideon. Terrible idea from a terrible administration.
Doesn’t change the fact that Maduro is an autocrat, imo, but they’re not wrong that the US consistently puts their thumb on the scale of a lot of elections, especially in the western hemisphere. I still think it’s insane to support this kind of election barring because it’s clearly an easy tool to unjustly benefit incumbents. It’s a totally different story with Trump because he violated his oath of office. With this woman, people just don’t like the policies she’s proposing, in plain day, to the voters. Let them pick who their leader is.
Obama did coups, Bush II did coups, Clinton did coups, Bush I did coups, Reagan did coups. This isn’t a Republican problem, it is a US problem.
I don’t think it’s fair to characterize Libya as a coup, the west just fanned the flames and Gaddafi was a terrible autocrat. I hope you don’t think Euromaidan was a coup. Clinton’s Haiti invasion certainly didn’t work out but it had popular support in Haiti at the time. Not all military intervention is created equal. None under this administration, either
I’m not going to compare coups, of which there are more than you star, because an incredible and dangerous power dynamic is at play. How is it democratic for the US to do these coups when their own citizens are told lies to justify them. Those statements often prove to be false justifications. The US does this shit not for democracy but often for their own hegemony and/or the desires of the capitalist class to extract resources from these nations. If everyone acted like the US, I think even you would see the forest for the trees.
I was just listing the ones democrats “own”. The egregious ones I can think of all belong to Republicans besides Bay of Pigs. I agree with you that much of the US media has manufactured consent when legitimate justification didn’t exist, but I disagree that this is unique to the US. You can watch Russian state media manufacture consent for the war in Ukraine on YouTube, and they’ve regularly tried to assassinate Zelenskyy. Iran props up the Houthis that are also attempting to overthrow Yemen’s government. The French have a long history of it, the British, I could go on. Don’t get me wrong, I find military intervention ineffective in doing anything other than benefiting Raytheon shareholders in most cases, but the only thing that differentiates the US from much of the rest of the world is the ability to project power much more significantly.
You can disagree with Maduro and his autocratic actions without supporting sanctions that mostly harm the civilian population.
